


i must become a lion-hearted girl

by ozmissage



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-09-26
Updated: 2010-09-26
Packaged: 2017-10-17 23:33:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 924
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/182546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ozmissage/pseuds/ozmissage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i> Cassie figures she has two choices: she can stay at the paper and write about the end of the world or she can go out and try to stop it.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	i must become a lion-hearted girl

The world is ending and then it isn’t. Somehow she knows he’s involved. Hell he’s probably right at the middle of it. She doesn’t call to confirm her suspicions. Bridges burned and all that jazz.

Besides it's better that he doesn’t know what she’s doing. He’d just try to talk her out of it.

*

Her mother died and the house was too big and too empty so she sold it for half of what it was worth and buried herself in work instead. Funny thing about an apocalypse, it racks up an impressive (nauseating) body count. It’s hard not to notice the signs---the plagues, the gruesome deaths, the sudden omnipotence of Bill O’Reilly---when it’s piling up on her desk every morning. Clearly the end is nigh.

Cassie figures she has two choices: she can stay at the paper and write about the end of the world or she can go out and try to stop it. Or slow it down. Or go down in a blaze of glory. Or something like that.

So she packs a bag, gets a permit, buys a gun, learns how to shoot the gun then tosses it all in the back of her very practical four-door Sedan and drives off into the sunset ready to kill some monsters.

Then she realizes she doesn’t know a damn thing about killing monsters.

*

She finds books. In her relatively short lifetime, Cassie has learned there’s a book for just about everything. That’s how she learned to crochet and change her car’s oil and that’s how she learns to take the head off a vampire and the right turn of phrase to exorcize a demon.

Next she finds people. The reporter in her demands it. She stops at every seedy dive bar on the east coast and asks the right questions, ignores the leering looks, and writes it all down in her journal until she has a decent idea of what the hell she’s doing.

She reads over the words at night when she’s lying on top of scratchy wool blankets in motel rooms that haven’t been cleaned since the Reagan era and it feels like they were written by someone else.

She remembers how earnest Dean was the first time he told her about all of this shit. He wanted her to believe him, to understand. She was nineteen and he was just passing through, they both knew that deep down. Thinking he was crazy was easier than turning her world upside down for someone who was never going to stay. She doesn’t wish she could go back, but she does wish she had asked a few more questions.

*

Her first job is small, just a haunted house.

She gets her ass kicked by a ghost and vows to never use the word just in the same sentence as haunted house again. She comes away with a cracked rib, more bruises than she can count, and she gags as she’s salting the bones.

But she does it, that’s the important part.

*

She does a dozen more jobs and hears whispers of the Winchesters in every bar she stops in. People speak their names with equal parts reverie and contempt. She doesn’t ask why, finds that she doesn’t want to know.

Outside, the world gets a little darker with every passing day. Somehow, it doesn’t scare her anymore.

*

Around Christmas she meets a girl named Jo.

They’re both after the same demon nest and Cassie’s still a little skittish around demons, so she welcomes the help. It takes a whole night to clean them out. Cassie nearly dies twice (okay, four times) but Jo fights like it’s nothing. It’s kind of beautiful.

They sit on the back of Jo’s pick-up and share a beer, shivering as they wait for the sun to come up.

“How long you been doing this?” Jo asks.

“Not long, just a few months. You?”

Jo shrugs.

“I’ve always been around hunters…I guess I’ve always thought of myself as one, you know?”

“I can see why. You’re damn good at it.”

“Shut up,” Jo says but she’s grinning.

They finish their beer, go their separate ways.

*

Months pass and then the word is it’s all over. The world's not ending anytime soon. No one really knows why.

Cassie thinks about calling Dean. Just to check up, just to make sure he’s still breathing. To tell him…she’s not sure what. Maybe, _I get it now._

Then she picks up a paper and sees a story buried on the bottom of the front page about a group of little boys in a nowhere town that went missing over a month ago. Sounds like a job.

It’s not over. It never is.

She does the job, forgets to call.

*

It only takes a year for the road to become home and the work to become her life.

She passes through his town in the spring, crosses his path. She sees him through the window of a diner laughing with some woman with an easy smile and a little boy who’s looking at him like he’s a hero, and she catches her reflection in the glass, sees the cut above her eye and the dirt on her shirt.

She smiles, waves. He mouths her name and she laughs at the familiar look of confusion that crosses his face.

In the diner, Dean gets up. She’s gone before he makes it to the door.

He looks okay and she’s got places to be.

It’s strange how life works out sometimes.


End file.
